Eternal: Chapter Four, Part 3

Caroline drove us across town to Ian’s loft apartment. I hadn’t been there since the Thanksgiving we spent together, but it hadn’t changed much. The most striking difference was the artwork everywhere. Canvases were propped against and hung on all the walls, the images ranging from tranquil or busy scenes to abstract splashes of color or seemingly randomly placed angles and shapes.

One piece in particular caught my eye—partly for the color choices and partly because it seemed to be calling to me, demanding attention; it was propped against the floor to ceiling windows in the area functioning as a living room. In the center, blue, green, gray, and red ribbons twisted and intertwined in the center, strands peeling away in different directions, the other colors clutching to them—following and pulling them back. The strand was surrounded by blackness, a void of nonexistence; except light radiated around the ribbons and the strips breaking away.

“He calls it Contamination,” Caroline said, standing beside me. “I think it’s brilliant, but he won’t listen to me. Something about it being a statement.”

“It is a statement,” I said, wanting to touch it, but not wanting to be disrespectful, either.

“How?” Caroline huffed impatiently, crossing her arms. “Ian won’t explain it to me.”

“This is us,” I said, pointing to the strands. “The four elements and consequently all of the elementals. The blackness is the world; the people who don’t have the connections to nature we have, so they don’t understand what we do, especially about the way the world is.”

“Then the light is the contamination?” she asked, glancing from me back to the painting. “Contamination is a bad thing, isn’t it?”

“It’s often given a negative connotation, yes. But in this case, people don’t see the good we cause. Most would be afraid if they knew the truth about a lot of us,” I said, struggling to find the words that would make her understand what I did. “So to darkness, light can be seen as a bad thing, though oftentimes light is given a positive connation. To a world in darkness, light is contamination.”

“So we’re just gifted to make things worse?”

“Not at all;” I turned to face her. I never would have thought she would have drawn that conclusion. “We make things better, in theory.”

“You’re losing me,” she warned, shaking her head and closing her eyes. “We’re contaminating the dark world but we’re the good ones?”

“More, the world is in darkness because they don’t know. When they don’t know, it doesn’t really seem like anything is changing. There’s just…an angry environmentalist trying to stop companies from polluting rivers, or—or a crazy tree hugger trying to save the rainforest,” I said, taking a different approach. “For the longest time, we’ve been discouraged from letting people know we’re elementals, that we’re different. That’s why the branching strips are being pulled back.”

“But why are there are so many branching off if they’re not supposed to?”

“Because the people need to know eventually. If they know, they might listen more to what we have to say.”

“Or they might just think we’re freaks,” Caroline countered skeptically, crossing her arms and shivering. Definitely not a reaction I would have expected from her. I couldn’t help feeling these thoughts weren’t necessarily her own, but someone else’s that had been ground into her.

“Some people will think anyone different is a freak,” Ian said from behind us, causing us both to jump. Caroline hit his arm as I waited for him to finish his statement. “If any of us are really going to make a difference in anything, we have to stop being afraid of the people who will hate us.”

“Why didn’t you just explain that the first time I asked you?” Caroline demanded, pouting a little. I wasn’t sure she understood; all I could really hope was that she was beginning to.

“Do you realize how long it took her to explain it to you?” he retorted, turning his bright blue eyes on me. “You’ve changed…a lot.”

I smiled, trying to lighten his mood as his observation seemed to depress him. “And you haven’t changed at all,” I said, noting he still wore a stocking cap over his flaming red hair.

Hugging me, he added, “Sorry you had to explain it to her. I’m glad you understood it.”

“Of course I understood it.”

“I didn’t,” Caroline reminded us, hands on her hips. “Oh, and you have to call Abs Leirba now.”

“Why’s that?” he asked, his left eyebrow cocked.

“Drei’s choice, really. I’m just going with the flow.”

“I’m going to make coffee,” Caroline announced, heading to the kitchen area.

“You know where everything is.” When she was out of earshot, he confided, “She really missed you. What took you so long to resurface?”